Americana: Brute or Mouse

While researching their book, Wife Beating: The Silent Crisis,
co-authors Roger Langley and Richard C. Levy discovered that husbands
get banged around too. In fact, while the pair estimates that there are
28 million battered wives in the country, they put the figure for
battered husbands at 12 million. A beaten husband has some extra
problems, says Levy. "Should he take the abuse or fight back? Whether
he is a sniveling mouse or a Neanderthal brute, society will reject
him."